


A Glint of Hope

by IsaacDowney



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: About her relationship with the chocobros, Angst, Aranea's POV, Because I can't write anything else apparently, For FFXV Secret Santa, Gen, not even for Christmas lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsaacDowney/pseuds/IsaacDowney
Summary: Aranea's character study. Her relationship with the bros and what it brought her."I first thought they would never had a chance. Not a chance against Niflheim. They were only four, they were young, they knew nothing but ... they had something in their eyes, something that had died in my own a long time ago.Hope.If you had asked me at the time, I would have said, there was nothing to hope for."





	A Glint of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Secret Santa for @mako-lies !
> 
> They asked for a character study and Aranea was in their favorite characters so yeah, I choose her, also they liked angst so lol  
> Kept it general because honestly adding romance in that was.. useless
> 
> Anyway, hope they like it ! And hope YOU do too !

I first thought they would never had a chance. Not a chance against Niflheim. They were only four, they were young, they knew nothing but ... they had something in their eyes, something that had died in my own a long time ago.

  
Hope.

  
If you had asked me at that time, I would have said, there was nothing to hope for.

  
The first time I saw them, I fought them. I didn't want to kill them, I only tried to understand who they were, what they had to offer, how exactly strong they could be. I was not disappointed ... but they still had a long way to go, a path filled with ambushes. I told myself that I didn't have to help them, wasn't my job, after all.

  
What happened then, I don't remember well. Everything happened fast, like in a flash, one bullet. When I saw them again, they were more friendly than I thought they would be. I don't think they ever judged me. If anything, they've been nothing but supportive.

  
They had a goal and they were more than just hopeful about it. They were determined to succeed. I guess they could have been great leaders. Would have been difficult to be worse than Aldercapt anyway.  
They were... kind, somehow. Noctis was still a brat, Gladiolus just too full of himself, Ignis had a stick up in the ass and Prompto acted too immature sometimes.  
They weren't perfect but they were humans. We cruelly needed humanity.  
They didn't need to be above everyone, they weren't... and they never tried to be. They weren't calling themselves heroes. They just wanted to help. They just wanted to take back what was theirs. Ours.

  
I may not be a Lucian, but at the end of this journey, did citizenship really mattered ?

  
I thought it did when Lucians screamed at me not to help them, not to touch them, because I was a niff. They preferred dying refusing the help of the enemy. It mattered when this father refused to give me his bleeding daughter. Yeah, somehow it mattered to these people. They were the reflection of propaganda, of years of wars, of impossible peace. They were this side of humanity that I hated, the side that couldn't adapt and overcome.

Sometimes I wanted to give up on helping. I told myself that maybe they really had been too hopeful... but then I saw them again.

  
Prompto had disappeared. I asked if he was dead. They didn't know. Some part of them still hoped, of course, but I also this reality, this cruelty I knew too well, crushing them, making them hold their breaths. Their eyes seemed to scream:  
"Yeah. He is dead. And what are we gonna do now ?"

  
Ignis had become blind, he talked about it so casually, but I saw him, bumbling into things, not really knowing where to go, who to follow. I saw Gladiolus' face shattered, as if he wanted to yell and maybe he wanted to hide too, for not have been able to protect.

That is when I realized that this world always had been cruel on them. It was obvious, but it's like I needed to see them suffer more to understand... that they already suffered too much.

  
I told them to keep being hopeful. The words left my mouth before I could stop them. I managed to say it casually, they didn't even answer. Maybe they didn't heard me.  
Their eyes never shined again.

Later on, I saw Prompto, alive but ... something within himself had been broken. He kept repeating he wasn't worth it. If he wasn't, who was ?  
I asked him what he really wanted. He didn't answer but I saw it in his eyes, hope, not too bright, only there a second, but here.

  
I was finally doing something helpful.

Days after my excursion in Niflheim, in the middle of the night, sun disappeared and morning never came. I never saw Noctis again.

  
Daemons came in flows, I saw my men, my friends, died under my eyes, again. Any form or any kind of control was destroyed. The world became nothing but anarchy.

This. This was ideal setting to observe the lowest of humanity.

  
I almost prayed to find someone, anyone, hopeful. I wished myself to be hopeful.

I wasn't.

Nobody was.

 

I joined the Hunters, telling myself that if I couldn't be hopeful, I could at least try to be helpful. At some point, people stopped calling me a Niff. Maybe this was there that I should have seen hope.

 

Two years later, I saw Prompto again. He was in an even worse state than when I last saw him. He had nothing cheerful like the first time I met him.   
We waited for the sun to come back, we waited for Noctis. At some point, he actually came back but I didn't get the chance to see him.

  
When I heard that they were going to Insomnia to fulfil Noctis' destiny or whatever it was, I felt ... hopeful, for the first time in my life.

  
What a cruel feeling.

  
I wished I could have felt hope in a beautiful way but instead, I hoped for him to die in order to save us all.

 

...

 

These guys taught me a lot.

When the sun came back, I tried to smile, but I couldn't.

 

I think...

 

Hope died with them.

 


End file.
